Law firm accounting software that starts with the trust side

Law firm accounting has a complication most small businesses never face: two kinds of money that must never mix. Client money in trust belongs to the client until it is earned, and the firm’s own money pays the rent. Small-firm books usually go wrong at the seam between the two: a retainer deposited to operating, a fee taken from trust before it was earned, or a bookkeeper who sees one bank balance and reads it as the firm’s.

What the rules ask

ABA Model Rule 1.15 requires a lawyer to hold client property separate from the lawyer’s own, in a separate account, and to keep complete records of it for a period after the representation ends. Fees and expenses paid in advance go into the trust account and may be withdrawn only as fees are earned or expenses incurred. The lawyer’s own money may sit in trust only to pay the account’s bank service charges. Each state adopts its own version, and tax and bookkeeping questions belong with your accountant.

What Coil does today

• Trust accounting. Client and matter sub-ledgers, deposits, disbursements and transfers, a three-way reconciliation with every uncleared item listed, locked periods once reconciled, and a refusal to take any client below zero.
• Reports reconciled against their rows. WIP, receivables aging, realization, productivity, compensation and trust, each downloadable as CSV.
• Fee splits and compensation. Originating, working and referral percentages on each matter, and a compensation report built on collected fees that says so.
• QuickBooks-layout exports. Customers, invoices and payments as CSV files laid out for the QuickBooks importer.
• Everything else as CSV. Contacts, matters, time and the full trust ledger, with spreadsheet formula injection neutralised and a currency code on every amount.
• An audit log of every destructive action, exportable to CSV for your accountant.

What is in testing, and what is later

• Invoicing and payments are built and in testing, not available today. Until they launch, you bill and collect in whatever you use now, and Coil holds the time, expenses and trust records behind those bills.
• Multi-currency matters are in testing.
• A live two-way QuickBooks sync is in a later phase. Today you import the CSV files yourself.
• Credit notes and refunds, the accounting-correct way to reverse a paid invoice, are designed and not built.
• An operating ledger with bank import, reconciliation and a profit and loss report exists in Coil, but it is not on the proven list yet. Keep your general ledger in your accounting software until it is.

What Coil does not do

Coil does not run payroll, prepare tax returns or file anything with a tax authority, and it does not replace your accountant’s review. It is not a bank: it does not hold or move money, and when online payments launch they go through your own Stripe account. It does not file anything with your state’s IOLTA program.

One limit is worth knowing in detail. Coil refuses any disbursement that would take a client below zero, but it does not know whether a fee you move from trust to operating has actually been earned on that matter. That judgment, and the time records and invoices that support it, are yours, and they are what a bar auditor will ask to see.

How it fits with your bookkeeper

If your bookkeeper or CPA works in QuickBooks, Coil is set up to feed them rather than replace them. The trust ledger and its three-way reconciliation cover the side of the books that bar rules care about most. The QuickBooks-layout CSVs and report exports cover the operating side. They keep their tools, and you stop rebuilding client balances from bank statements at month end.

A workable month end looks like this: reconcile trust three ways in Coil and keep the report, export the reports and the QuickBooks files, and hand both to whoever keeps the books.

Coil is free during the beta, and beta firms keep founding pricing when paid plans start.

Last checked October 28, 2026.